One of my favourite pieces of furniture is a small chest of drawers. It’s simple and rustic, the colour of dark honey, and it’s probably 100 years old. It has a lovely patina I have kept up by waxing it from time to time with a bit of Antiquax, a fine paste wax from England.

I found it years ago in Vermont, at one of those multi-dealer places on Route 7. I think I paid $75 – maybe less. At barely about three feet wide and less than three feet high, it was small enough to fit into the trunk of the car. For as long as I can remember, I have been drawn to furniture that had a life before it came into mine. I like to think about the places it stood before I took it home and wonder about where it will be when it is no longer mine.

At home, the chest sits against a wall just inside the living room. It’s not an important or valuable piece, but I love its rounded corners and graceful lines. A table lamp with a creamy parchment shade sits on top of it, and a rectangular wood and glass tray into which I automatically drop my house keys when I come in (so that I’m not obliged to spend endless amounts of time looking for them when I’m trying to leave). It’s a pleasing tableau.

The top drawer of the chest holds eyeglasses, sunglasses, spare keys and assorted warranties and other papers; there are gloves and mitts in the middle drawer, and, in the bottom one, light bulbs. All very organized. There’s just one thing: The piece is as impractical as it is lovely.

Unlike modern chests, which have metal rails and wheels on which the drawers slide and glide, this one has neither: The drawers don’t slide or glide at all. I’ve rubbed them with soap and I’ve waxed them and, still, they stick.

Trying to jiggle them works only occasionally; besides, the piece is lightweight enough that tugging at the knobs of a drawer that won’t open means, invariably, that I end up pulling the whole chest along the floor. It’s just a piece of furniture, I know. But sometimes it seems to me that it has a will of its own – a personality.

The other night, desperate to find the spare car key, I tried to open the top drawer. Nothing. I pulled at the wooden knobs some more. Then I pulled harder. And harder. I felt the left side start to give a bit – but then the drawer got stuck at a rakish angle and wouldn’t budge. Frustrated, I gave up and went to bed.

In the light of day, it was clear to me that, in trying to force the drawer, I had caused it to become wedged into the left side of the chest. No amount of strength would have dislodged it: Enough force would merely have caused the entire piece to splinter.

Ever so gently, I moved the drawer just slightly to the right – barely half an inch. That’s all it took. I pulled softly on the knobs, and it opened.

As I lifted the key out, I thought how the incident said a lot about the way I can be – how, too often, I am rigid and fierce when I could accomplish more with gentleness and diplomacy. I know that but, as T.S Eliot wrote in The Hollow Men, Between the idea/And the reality/Between the motion/And the act/Falls the Shadow.

Many people equate gentleness with weakness – but that is a mistake, just as it is a mistake to equate force with strength.

In a fable by the ancient Greek storyteller Aesop, the wind and the sun challenged one another to see which could cause a man travelling along a road to remove his coat more quickly. The wind went first, blowing gusts so powerful that the man could barely stay upright. But the harder it blew, the more tightly he held his coat around himself. The wind blew until it could blow no more and then it was the sun’s turn. The sun shone down on the traveller and, in time, the man unbuttoned his coat and, before long, removed it.

The power of the wind was great, arguably. But what I like to think of as the sun’s gentle persuasion made it win the challenge.

“Nothing is as strong as gentleness,” observed Saint Francis de Sales (1567-1622), “nothing so gentle as real strength.”

It was only in being gentle that I was able to get the drawer to open. Force got me nowhere.

And it is when I am gentle in my interactions with others – not just drawers – that I am my best self. Sure, it can simpler to make headway by being tough: There is less chance that others will treat us like doormats or take advantage of us, we tell ourselves. Gentleness is a choice – a choice to be more patient and considered and thoughtful, although no less determined. And in choosing to be gentle, we can make it our strength.

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